[Feature Request] SteamOS Automatic hardware detection

[kahnakha]

Hello All,

After using SteamOS for quite some time now on many different systems, including SteamDeck, ROG Ally, and an all AMD HTPC setup similar to the Steam Machine in terms of hardware specs, it came to me that for some reason SteamOS treats all of these systems as Steam Deck(even including the Steam Machine), and that's an issue for some games, where users are oftenly locked behind some limitations, for example not the full advanced graphical settings are available, or not the full screen resolution options are available, because the OS "thinks" it's a Steam Deck, thus limiting some games features to ensure the smoothest gameplay experience on the platform.
I'm pretty sure, you can already see where the issue is.

The workaround:
Game Launch Options: SteamDeck=0 %command%

This is "telling" the game that your system is in fact not a Steam Deck so that you can benefit from all ingame available settings, and features, so you can also utilize the available hardware.

All of this is especially true for the Steam Machine, as it's way more capable then the Steam Deck, and we can only expect that most people simply want to start the system, and play their favorite titles without even thinking about all that, thus we cannot expect those same people to also be aware of these launch options, plus, they also don't always work too.

The solution:
Fully automatic, and hardware-aware process, so SteamDeck=0 is only applied on non-Deck systems, while real Steam Deck hardware keeps its default behavior.
The clean way to do this is to conditionally set the environment variable at login, based on actual hardware detection.

What we know is that a real Steam Deck exposes identifiable system info via:
DMI/BIOS strings (/sys/class/dmi/id/*)
Vendor/model fields like: Valve Jupiter (LCD Deck) or Galileo (OLED Deck)

So we can check those and decide:
Is it a Real Deck? Yes, then keep SteamDeck=1
Anything else, force SteamDeck=0

Example of a detection script:

#!/bin/bash

# Detect if running on actual Steam Deck hardware
if grep -qiE "valve|jupiter|galileo" /sys/class/dmi/id/{sys_vendor,board_vendor,product_name,board_name} 2>/dev/null; then
    export SteamDeck=1
else
    export SteamDeck=0
fi

Example script file name: steamdeck-detect.sh

And then just hook it into the environment nano ~/.profile
source ~/.config/profile.d/steamdeck-detect.sh

All of this can also be introduced as a new feature as a trigger on the Steam UI, or in Gamescope, so that people can decide if they want to use the Deck profile, or the Desktop profile for their games, without the need of manually typing any commands anywhere.

Please let me know what you think, and if this is even a feasible request.
Thank You in advance.

[kahnakha]

I made some changes to the script to also include Steam Machine, and all future Valve hardware in the list of exclusions from the SteamDeck=0 just to be on the safe side in case for some unexplainable reasons this causes issues on it.
Some testing on the actual hardware is needed to verify.
I don't have the Steam Machine, so I did some testing on the systems that I have, an all AMD ITX PC, and a ROG Ally.
Both devices are having full functionality as expected, and I no longer need to input any launch commands to have certain options on certain games available to me, which is now 1 less thing to worry about when installing and launching a game.

So here's what I did to automate this process:

1. Created a file in ~/.config/profile.d and named it steamdeck-detect.sh

mkdir -p ~/.config/profile.d
nano ~/.config/profile.d/steamdeck-detect.sh

2. As per the above, I used nano to also open the file, and input the script:

#!/bin/bash

VENDOR=$(cat /sys/class/dmi/id/sys_vendor 2>/dev/null)
PRODUCT=$(cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_name 2>/dev/null)

if echo "$VENDOR $PRODUCT" | grep -qiE "valve"; then
    if echo "$PRODUCT" | grep -qiE "jupiter|galileo"; then
        # Steam Deck
        export SteamDeck=1
    else
        # Steam Machine (or future Valve hardware)
        export SteamDeck=1   # safe default, but should it be?
    fi
else
    # Non-Valve hardware (desktop/laptop/htpc/non-valve-handhelds/)
    export SteamDeck=0
fi

3. I made the file executable
   chmod +x ~/.config/profile.d/steamdeck-detect.sh

4. I hooked the script into the environment
   nano ~/.profile
   Hook: source ~/.config/profile.d/steamdeck-detect.sh

And then a reboot of the system for it to take effect.
Long and behold, I no longer need to use any launch options to achieve the results that I want from my system.

[lostgoat]

Thanks for the feedback @kahnakha, this was the intention and that other devices were detected as steamdeck was a bug.

This was recently fixed in the day1 steam machine update. If you are in an up to date client and launch a game it is expected that it shouldn't advertise as a steamdeck by default.

E.g. launching Into the Breach with default launch options on steam machine results in an unset SteamDeck env var:

(deck@box ~)$ strings /proc/$(pgrep -o Breach)/environ | grep -i SteamDeck
(1)(deck@box ~)$ 

[JakeTheJake74]

I don’t know if this is the same issue or related exactly, but some games either think they’re a steam deck and so disable graphics options like ray tracing or screen space reflections; or disable them purely because they detect proton or wine.

Build: 9070XT and 7500x3D with 32gb 600Mhz DDr5

Steam OS 3.8.22
OS Build 20260703.2
Opted into Beta

When playing Monster Hunter Wilds, opening the game with no launch options removed the ray tracing option and screen space reflection option from graphics settings

Using the launch option:
/WineDetectionEnabled:False
restores these options. Assuming it’s not the Steam deck identify issue, but a software detecting wine/proton issue, ideally there’d be a work around without having to add this launch command. Aside from just asking the devs like Capcom to update their games to use the Steam deck indicator instead of a proton detector, having a check box under force comparability menu that does the same thing would be great.

In the future it’d be best if proton or Steam OS could understand when a game is doing this on a non Steam deck device and apply it automatically with no input needed from the player.

[kahnakha]

Thanks for the feedback @kahnakha, this was the intention and that other devices were detected as steamdeck was a bug.

This was recently fixed in the day1 steam machine update. If you are in an up to date client and launch a game it is expected that it shouldn't advertise as a steamdeck by default.

E.g. launching Into the Breach with default launch options on steam machine results in an unset SteamDeck env var:

(deck@box ~)$ strings /proc/$(pgrep -o Breach)/environ | grep -i SteamDeck
(1)(deck@box ~)$ 

Hi @lostgoat
This may be true for some systems, but maybe not necessarily all of them, as I always keep mine up to the latest stable branch.
I have a ROG Ally, and an all AMD HTPC, both running latest stable branch of SteamOS, and on both of them I had to use SteamDeck=0 even after the release of the Steam Machine, otherwise I will be locked out of some settings, and in some instances, from some resolution options also.

The 3 games that I found issues with if I’m not using the SteamDeck=0 launch option are:
Mortal Kombat 1 - Locked only up to Medium.
Expedition 33 - Most gfx settings are unavailable.
No Rest For The Wicked - most resolution options are unavailable.

I also found a guy on another forum just yesterday, who is actually having the Steam Machine and the exact same issues with No Rest For The Wicked, and what’s weird(according to him) is that regardless of SteamDeck=0 as a launch option, he still doesn’t have the screen native resolution option available.
Now, I can’t speak with much detail from someone else, but I know that this is not an expected behavior.

[akahomebody]

@lostgoat I don’t have the technical know-how to know why this happening, but can confirm that No Rest For The Wicked refuses to give any resolution options above 1920x800 on the steam machine. I’ve tried numerous combinations of things to try get it to work, to no avail.

[calamityholton]

Hey all, here are my personal experiences with my Steam Machine and No Rest for the Wicked specifically (its the game in my collection that seems to have this issue).

Steam Machine-
SteamOS stable branch.
Disabled the GUI "treat this is as a Steam Deck".
Tried launch option set to "SteamDeck=0 %command%"
Tried GE-Proton, Proton 10.04 (Valve tested for compatibility), various Proton versions as well

All still locked to SteamDeck limited resolutions / settings (1920x800 max resolution, even though Deck is 1280x800)

I am not sure what else I can do to further test, but this seems to be an issue specifically with the Steam Machine, I have other experience with a friend of mine using an ITX build running SteamOS and he has no issues with it, perfectly fine PC settings. So at a hardware level, somewhere, someway, whether within the Unity project itself for No Rest, or within SteamOS / Steam Machine hardware comparison with SteamDeck, we have an issue.

[lostgoat]

I downloaded No Rest for the Wicked to test, and it is indeed doing something weird.

I've confirmed that we are not advertising to this game that we are a steamdeck. But it still restricts the resolution to 800p height. This matches what @calamityholton mentioned above, where setting SteamDeck=0 %command% in the launch args still results in the limited resolution.

This is also not wine/proton detection as it runs correctly on my desktop PC. So the game is checking something and then limits itself to 800p. But at the moment we don't know what that something would be.

I'm going to keep this issue open even though the No Rest for the Wicked bug is unrelated and run a couple more checks. But it is likely that this is going to be a game side bug that the game dev needs to fix.

[kahnakha]

Something weird is going on with this game specifically and the SM itself, as I can also confirm that the same thing is not happening on my htpc running SteamOS, or on my ROG Ally.
The only thing I would like to see results from is a different OS on the SM, just for a test, and to also play the rule of exclusion.
If it’s not wine/proton, and it’s not some sort of anomaly from mesa side too, then surely must be something else entirely.
This game specifically will not receive any further updates as it has been confirmed by the developer on multiple occasions, because the game is exiting its Early Access program by receiving a full fledged release at the end of the year.
One other concern is the engine itself, which in this case is Unity and although I never had issues with it, it is notorious of acting weird amongst the community. -At least that’s what I read around the different blogs.
As I said earlier, I would like to play the rules of excluding the possibilities here, but unfortunately I don’t have a SM to do all that, so we just need to find somebody who’s willing to:

1. Make a fresh install of SteamOS without any mods, or manual settings adjustments, just leave everything by default and also try on different OS and Client branches(Stable, Beta, Preview, Main)

2. Capture logs from literally everything(Steam, wine, proton, os)
   -Launch Steam from terminal, then start the game wait for it to load up until the main menu, open game settings, navigate to the resolution settings, and then close the game and capture the logs from the terminal to see if steam or Steamworks API is doing something weird.

3. Install a similar to SteamOS Linux distribution(CachyOS, Bazzite, Nobara) and repeat the test.

4. If all of the above yields the same result, install Windows and repeat the tests.

It’s quite a bunch of things to do, and I’m simply not sure at this point how much is worth the effort, especially knowing that the game will receive an update and a full release by the end of the year, and this Early Access will not be touched by then.
But still… it’s a weird-weird thing happening and I would still like to reach the bottom of it :)